These two pictures were taken 04/15/1987 at Portage, WI. By then, the MILW had been merged into the Soo Line, now CP. I thought the art-deco depot was neat; it's gone today. Former MILW 353 is a GP-38-2.
That would've been a nice building to restore, blast all that paint off to the natural brick, and redo the interior! Odd part, what's the deal with the rooftop garage door thingy?
I read in Classic Trains magazine that the art-deco look was a result of a "radically altered" rebuilding of the original 1870 depot done circa WW-II! I'm guessing the rooftop box may have housed HVAC equipment? I don't know for sure.
#353 was from their first batch of GP38-2 units. Delivered in the Spring of 1973. First served on the former Northern Montana Division.
Their second batch had dynamic brakes. As to the trucks, hard to say why. I don't remember anything special they ordered about these units. But they were all GP38-2. MILW did a lot of trading in for their newer stuff. Perhaps that was where the trucks originated? I might have that info, but no time to check today.
Best part of the Pentrex "Milwaukee Road Vol. I II and III"-three brand new Milw Geeps rolling on the Northern Montana up to Lewiston! Priceless footage!
Being a bit of a structure hound, I snapped these three former Milwaukee Road depots and some others too. Sauk City and Sun Prairie from 04/16/1987 and Edgerton from 10/23/1990.
That's a great trio of films from Pentrex Kurt. Loaded with great stuff. All these depots are really cool to see. Thank you Hardcoaler!
It is a great set. Got mine when it first was released. Still have it. BTW- The narration is incorrect about that train. They have the train number wrong. It was filmed in 1973, but the train number was not changed until December of 1974...... The engineer on that train was named Hanley. Nice man. I corresponded a bit with him. He had kept all of his career time books, etc, so could ID all kinds of places, events, engines, people, dates. I knew one of his sons, who was an N scale modeler- Milwaukee Road of all things. Ha ha.
Red Hanley! I used to chat with his son about Milwaukee Road stuff back in the day on Facebook. Can't remember his name, haven't been on any socials for 5 years now.
